Daily Times

Parag Khanna an Indian American thinker termed, “Cities as the Mankind’s most enduring and stable mode of social organizations, outlasting all empires and nations over which they have presided.” Pakistan is home to many of such cities which saw the rules of many Empires or remained city states in ancient times, so these cities are now holding rich cultural heritage, and not just for Pakistan but for the entire world.

These cities contain some extraordinary buildings or other features built over all these centuries, which made them culturally rich and even today people from around the globe visit these Pakistani cities. We can count the largest Pakistani metropolitan cities like Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad and Peshawar etc on our fingers and many of these large cities are now dusty, rusty and dirty. Today many of Pakistan’s largest cities lack even basic infrastructure and other facilities.

In recent years the economic crisis gave rise to the energy crisis which molded the energy consumption habits of citizens residing in these cities. From outdated electricity and gas infrastructure to miserable state of government-owned medical facilities and lack of all-important environmental monitoring systems all these issues made our cities the most vulnerable places in terms of health emergency, endemics, business, security, and overall living standard parameters when we compare it with other metropolitan cities around the globe.

Energy infrastructure is considered as the backbone of modern cities, having modern transmission lines, gas delivery infrastructure and modern transport networks, this infrastructure is crucial in deciding that what fuel source is going to feed that city if cities lack energy transmission lines, and if there is no sufficient electricity or natural gas or other cleaner fuels not readily available for consumption by the households or factories, then these shortages not just affect the economic well-being of the city, but also change the way we want to plan the energy consumption model of our cities. The model we are talking about here may be new in Pakistan’s case, but the world is now a few steps ahead, they are upgrading their modern cities into smart cities.

A smart city is simply defined as a city that uses the information technology and modern communications tools, to translate and monitor the city’s performance in real-time. Pakistan is rapidly urbanizing, by one estimate 50% of its population by 2030 will be living in cities. According to the World Bank study, 75% of the world population will be living in cities by 2050.

Energy infrastructure is considered as the backbone of modern cities, having modern transmission lines, gas delivery infrastructure and modern transport networks, this infrastructure is crucial in deciding that what fuel source is going to feed that city if cities lack energy transmission lines, and if there is no sufficient electricity or natural gas or other cleaner fuels not readily available for consumption by the households or factories

We regularly see reports coming out from the developed countries about the state of pollution generation in our cities, few of our cities ranked in the top 10 polluted cities, the air quality index of Lahore, Faisalabad along with neighbor’s capital, Delhi came in news when its winter season. Even in such a dismal state, the Pakistani government and lawmakers are rarely seen debating these all-important urban mismanagement issues, which will take years to complete if they start from now. Cities around the globe are adopting growth and infrastructure strategies that are environmentally friendly, most cities in developed countries have already switched to this model and many of these cities are in the midst of this must have been transformation. Pakistan can strategically execute its coming transformation, most of the metropolis we have is outdated to the level, that we will not be able to upgrade it, instead, we have to get rid of all those bad infrastructure and growth habits which can make it harder for us to put our cities on the upgrade trajectory, with good and intelligent planning we can make our cities modern and more environmentally friendly, which as a result will improve the quality of life in these cities and our country.

Once we allow this transformation to happen, we can then think about introducing a few smart cities in our fold. In South Asia, India is the first country to introduce such a concept, they introduced a Smart Cities Mission Launched in 2015.

Pakistan is not a stranger to this concept, as the technological arm of the Ministry of Interior, The National Database & Registration Authority (NADRA), which also control the largest biometric database of Pakistani citizens introduced a safe city project, this project is by far the first-ever project in Pakistan which layout the smart security solutions for Federal and Provincial Capital Cities of Pakistan. the project is still not a success and is far from the execution stage because its implementation demands, all the parameters of a smart city, security parameters will not work alone, as it can work in sync with all other components of a smart city, and if we look around the globe, we can identify that all smart cities that we currently have around the globe are the safest cities, both in the face of natural calamities of human-made threats.

The fabricate of the broader energy infrastructure which will ultimately end up in our cities decides our energy consumption habits, large cities are fed with numerous energy sources, these energy sources if regulated and monitored by the government at all levels, ensure a strict enforcement norms.

The recent Coronavirus pandemic is testing the Urban Governance of many modern and smart cities in the developed world. Many cities because of its integrated network and structure are operating on the Key and Lock method, a City Government there is finding it easy to lock down a city or put it under tight quarantine control, without employing paramilitary forces or using strict measures like curfew to enforce the quarantine.

Pakistan is ill-prepared for this pandemic, decades of negligence can worsen the situation if the government failed to act promptly. Ebola co-discoverer, Peter Piot, in his recent interview with Financial Times on the Coronavirus summed it up for the Pakistani Policymakers, according to Piot, “You don’t set up a fire brigade when your house is already on fire”, this he refers to the stronger and well-prepared global health system. Our policymakers are experts in crafting responses to outside threats, we need to devote the same focus to inside threats, because of the aging energy infrastructure poor governance, and climate change.

The writer has a MSc Strategic Studies from the National Defence University Islamabad